WIRED's biggest stories, delivered to your inbox

Inevitable iPhone 4 Flashlight Apps Flicker Into View

With the iPhone 4, flashlight apps just got a whole lot more useful. Apps like “Dazzling Flashlight 4g” from Cramzy will fire up the new iPhone flash to light your way.

Previously, these apps would do little more than light up the screen in solid white. Some added “features” such as color, strobing and other jazzy effects. The thing is, when most of use an iPhone to light the way to the bathroom in the early hours, we just keep hitting the home button and navigate by whatever photons the unlock screen can provide.

Now the inevitable iPhone 4 versions are seeping into the App Store, and they light up the flash on the back of the handset. This is brighter than the screen (in some cases you can still choose to illuminate the screen, too), but you’ll still have to sleepily find the app before you stumble through your dark apartment.

More interesting is that these apps show us that Apple has provided developers with tools to control the external lamp. As on-axis flash is all but useless for straight photography, I’m hoping that somebody makes a strobing photo and video app that allows for some cool, stuttering image effects.